


drank til i was thirsty again

by zauberer_sirin



Series: if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Car Sex, Coulson's intimacy issues, Don't Touch Lola, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Older Man/Younger Woman, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Shameless Smut, Skye has trust issues, Smut, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, lol sex in a car is uncomfortable, relationships are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:36:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"We've never done it in Lola," Skye says. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	drank til i was thirsty again

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [i promised you i'd never give up](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1470562). Shameless smut.

  


She parks a short walk from the Bus, but the distance is enough to make it mean something.

She is all right, he _made sure_ , physically she is just fine. Not a scratch on her, not even a bruise. And he had other things to do besides – like assess the damage on the plane, make sure they haven't been thoroughly thieved and stripped, give Simmons a medal or something for keeping everybody safe until Skye got them out, make sure May is doing the first aid thing right because old fucking habits never die. He has to do these things first, as much as he wants to run after Skye and see if she's okay. She's okay, anyway. He made sure before he let her go on her own. She's okay. It's twenty minutes before he comes outside again.

She hasn't moved the car. He can see it parked at the edge of the runaway, passed the greenery, before the proper forest surrounding the base starts. He walks towards her slowly, like he is thinking about it. 

He knows she can tell he's approaching, even though she's looking straight ahead, at the inmensity of fir that makes this place safe and remote. He walks around, looking at her from besides the passenger's seat.

"Hey, I thought we said no joyrides."

Skye snort-chuckles and that's good, Coulson feels the heaviness in his chest dissipate a bit.

"Yeah," she says weakly. "This car is such a temptation, can't blame me."

"Are you okay?"

"I kind of crashed Lola," she says, voice all strange and tight at the edges. "On the way out from – you saw. I crashed your car."

He looks at the car. It's lost one of the front lights and yes, the left side is quite ugly to look at, the spot where the SUV crashed into it. He saw the video feed. There are two bullet holes somewhere too. It's a miracle (and Skye's quick thinking, and Simmons' brave use of misdirection tactics) that the enemy's raid on the Bus was a bust. He feels lucky, not wounded. The damage on the car seems expensive but not unfixable. Lola has been through some rough scrapes lately but Coulson is not worried about that right now.

"That doesn't matter."

"But – "

"We can send her to get repaired," he tells her. "Can I come in?"

She shrugs. He's going to take it as a yes, even though he knows it's more complicated than that. Skye never says _I want to be alone_ – she can't afford to, you see.

He gets in and watches her face not looking at him.

"Skye. There was no other car. They took the SUV. You made the right call. You _saved lives_."

"But I promised you. I promised I'd take good care of Lola."

He reaches out, puts one hand on her shoulder. It's comforting but it's not something else yet. They are quite wary of crossing lines when on the job, both of them, surprisingly (he wouldn't have imagined Skye was one for setting limits). Coulson guesses this still classifies as _on the job_. She stiffens a bit at the contact, most probably thinking the same thing. It's complicated, they are flying blind here but then Skye relaxes a bit under his touch, like she actually needs it, and for the moment it's all a bit simpler.

"I'm sorry I drove away," she says. "I didn't feel like sticking around for the debrief."

"That's just fine."

"I feel safe here," she says, leaning back on the leather seat. "I've always felt safe here. From the beginning."

She gets attached to the oddest things, Coulson thinks, but then again the man with the collection of pre-WWII espionage gadgets shouldn't judge.

It still troubles him a bit how she's not looking at him. He squeezes her shoulder slightly.

"You got everybody out, Skye. That's a victory for us, as far as I'm concerned."

"I know. I'm just – a bit spooked, that's all."

He knows what she means, though. More and more these days it seems like they are just a group of lunatics bent on a private war – nobody wants SHIELD's rejects anymore (they don't even want FitzSimmons, who could have had their pick of destination and job, once upon a time, before they met Coulson) and nobody wants to hear the scary bedtime stories about HYDRA growing in power and numbers again. People want to believe Captain America put an end to all that. Every day Coulson wakes up in this patched-up plane and wonders if he is the stupid one for staying behind. Then the suppossedly-finished HYDRA corps kill again and he knows the answer.

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt – literally, the cuts and bruises all over them, everybody on his team growing callouses at an alarming rate.

If this is what has Skye worried he has no way of reassuring her. They'll have to reassure each other, like they usually do.

Then she shifts in her seat, puts her hands on the wheel and sighs.

"I crashed your car," she says once more, looking desperately sad.

He slips his arm around her shoulders and brings her to his side, loose and almost casual in his embrace – not quite professional, not quite bosslike, but not the other thing yet, the line still intact enough that they can say this is about the job.

Skye hides against his chest.

"We can fix it," Coulson is saying against her hair. "It can be fixed. I told you, Lola is a lot tougher than she looks." She lifts her head a bit, her chin resting on his collarbone. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't want for things to mean something," she says; anyone other than Coulson would miss how that's a complete and detailed explanation of _everything_. "Things mean something, you know."

"I –"

She gestures towards where they are sitting, the entirety of the car.

"You told me to join SHIELD in this car. It was right here that I said yes."

He can't help it, to hell with lines they don't cross, to hell with professionality, he has to kiss her right now. Yes, the rest can go to hell. He grabs her shoulder with almost bruising force and he erases the little space remaining between them. Skye doesn't have time to open her mouth to welcome him so at first it's just their faces kind of smashed together and crushed lips and then she draws a breath, however she can, and Coulson can feel her chest going up against him and he thinks he should be too old to feel what he feels then and he feels glad that's not the case at all.

It shouldn't still be scary and exciting but it is.

They have been together for a couple of months but _together_ is a diffused state, not clearly demarked, and fueled by Skye's fear of abandonment, her constant holding back on him, and Coulson's own intimacy issues. She still calls him _Coulson_ even in bed and though he hasn't had time to reflect on it (there's a war going on) he thinks there might be something wrong with that. On the other hand he has never told her to call him anything else so maybe he's just as messed up. 

Skye spends most of her nights in his room now, and they have never really cared to hide it from the team. If they were bothered at first, they soon got over it. In a development that shouldn't have surprised Coulson at all May has been specially supportive, in a May way: she had rolled her eyes at him and said _Might even do you some good_.

It's not really easy – they are not easy people. He's not even sure it's working. He's sure not having this between them would work even less.

He runs his tongue along her lips, teasing her to follow his lead until she reaches one hand to his neck and holds him still so she can properly kiss back. He moves his hand from her shoulder to her arm and then to her back, between shoulderblades, pressing flat, rising and falling with the rhythm of their kisses.

She comes up for air. "We're going to get Lola fixed, right? We're not giving up on her?"

He shakes his head, slowly and meaningfully, and Skye grabs the lapels of his suit and pulls.

There's more kissing, which Coulson lets Skye take control of. She goes from hungry to content and back into some sort of frustrated need and at least that's normal, that's how her process normally goes. Coulson is a bit relieved, feeling her limbs unlock around him. A bit more kissing and he can actually feel the beginning on a grin against his mouth when his teeth tug at her lower lip. She lets him go with an audible sigh, drawing back, resting her face on the seat. She looks at him from there, a lazy look in her eyes.

"Feeling a bit better?" he asks, not smug at all – well, a bit smug, he's always a bit smug; this is no problem, Skye likes that.

Her face is relaxed, full of a playful fondness for him, her lips pink and curled up. Maybe this is working, Coulson thinks, generally, feeling a lot better himself. He hadn't thought about it but the attack on the Bus (their home, their rouge runaway home) had left him spooked as well – he needs this just as much as Skye.

"Yes. But you know, I could feel _even better_."

"Mmm?"

She shows him a mischevious smile. She kisses him, quick and dirty, placing one hand, all casual, on his inner thigh.

"We've never done it in Lola," she says. 

Coulson is used to her outbursts of crudeness by now. It's an imposture. He can imagine her at fourteen, playing the jaded adult. He can imagine her at sixteen, trying it for real. At twenty-five she has no need for it but it's become part of her and Coulson doesn't mind, he's no prude at all.

He's not sure crude is the path to follow right now.

"You're scared, Skye. What did we say? We don't do this when we are scared."

They don't have rules but if they had this would be one. Skye has an old habit of using sex for things, sometimes shortcuts, sometimes bandages, but Coulson can't be so careless with her.

He is good at knowing what makes people tick but there are some things she still has to tell him. And she does. Sometimes they talk all night.

Coulson knows, because she told her, that Skye figured out early enough she could use sex for _things_ , and in her teens she tried using it to get people _to stay_ , and found out that as often as not it drove people away at pretty much the same speed. Then with Miles, for three years, she thought sex was part of that holding out, that loyalty, like it was proof enough that they meant something, irrefutable proof that she wasn't alone. Very few times sex had been something without an agenda, something _for herself_. Perhaps Coulson is not the best person to try and get her out of that headspace, he has his own shortcomings here – and it's fair, he's told her that, he's told Skye how he doesn't like to be naked in front of her because his scar reminds him, might remind her, because looking at his own body makes him wonder if it's even his own anymore, yet the fact that he can tell her this means a lot, and they are slowly and frustratingly but surely clawing each other free of whatever has them trapped. 

They don't have rules but if they had it would be just the one: _No. This is for us_.

"I'm not – this is not about that," Skye tells him. Her hands are stubborn and dangerous all over his body.

He tangles one hand in her hair. He needs to be careful here. He pulls gently, wanting to catch her glance.

"Skye? Look at me."

She does and it's not like he expected at all.

"It's okay, I'm okay. Jesus, Coulson, for once – can't you _trust me_? I'm with you. I'm not anywhere else. This is you and me."

She takes his hand in hers, scraping her nails across his palm.

"Trust me?" she asks again, serious and calm enough for him to believe her.

"I trust you," he replies, looking into her eyes and letting her guide his hand between her legs. He grabs at her, stroking through the fabric of her jeans and underwear, with her fingers over his, her palm against his knuckles, teaching him how to touch her. Her other hand fumbling with his belt, not quite getting it and giving up, fingers teasing him through his tailored suit. They don't make the most dignified picture right now and neither of them remembers they're technically in the open, in public, with their whole team a few yards behind them.

Eventually she wants more and she works the button on her fly open. It's complicated, borderline impossible, settling into a satisfactory position; Skye has to spread her legs but at the same time she is trying to reach over, stroking him through his pants. It's not – it's not possible, not over the park brake console, so he grabs her wrist with his free hand and stops her, drapes her leg over his instead, half-turned towards her in his seat, so he can brush his hips against her knee as he gets to work with his fingers.

His hand is sort of trapped between her and her jeans and he has little moveability so he goes deep and slow. It's maddeningly awkward and then it's actually good, it's hot and wet between his hand and Skye and her clothes. All around his fingers she is so, so – and it actually helps, overwhelms his old skepticism, his disbelief that this girl could want him for something other than wrong, misguided reasons. She always dispels such doubts quickly and empirically, just as Coulson's own arousal strained under his clothes always dispels the doubts he might harbor about his own desire for her. It sort of works for them. It keeps working for them – he keeps waiting for it to stop but it doesn't, it works every time. And that's big, really big, and he wants to tell her, afraid she won't understand why, afraid she will, like she always does.

Skye is holding on to him, arms around his neck, getting there quick. 

"I need – I need..." she gets out between gasps.

"What do you need?" he asks, in a deadly calm tone, pressing his mouth against her cheek and crooking his fingers. She hisses.

"No, _no_. I need _more_."

She slides her body down, trying to get Coulson to pull out. He does, watching as Skye stands up and crosses to his side of the car.

She kisses his neck and jaw, wet and deep, while she undoes the zipper on his pants. As soon as he is free she turns around, looking over her shoulder to see if he gets the hint. He does. His hands are on her waist, anchoring her as she figures out the details of how this could work.

There are certain technical difficulties here (Lola is wonderful but she was definitely not designed with this scenario in mind) but after some struggle Skye shoves down her jeans, standing on the foot well, her back to Coulson – he runs his hand along her spine, pressing his fingertips to that spot of skin under the clasp of her bra. She reaches under her to find him, to guide him into her; he helps her, their fingers meeting around hot flesh and Coulson's mouth goes dry in a moment, this too-intimate gesture suddenly the right amount of intimate.

She pushes back against him a little too quick, a little too rough. She pushes heat and want against him. Coulson groans and Skye herself lets out a struggling, almost pained noise, a bit of a miscalculation.

"Fuck."

"Are you okay?" he asks, himself breathless, wanting to move inside her and not wanting it just yet.

"Yeah, yeah, it's just... it sounded easier in all those Penthouse letters."

He chuckles and gives her shoulder a light kiss through her cotton shirt.

"That's nice," she says, and rolls her hips. Coulson groans but it's the good kind of groan this time.

She props herself with one hand on the dashboard and starts moving into him, slowly.

This is too uncomfortable, Coulson thinks. What's wrong with a bed? He thinks and maybe he's exactly that old but then he angles up and he pushes a bit deeper and Skye lets out a little, happy sigh and _it doesn't matter_ , how uncomfortable or juvenile this is, it doesn't matter, he's buried inside her and he wants her and Skye wants him and she said _things mean something_ and yes, they do. This is you and me. We are soldiers but this is not the war.

He reaches his arm around her waist to touch where her body meets his. Skye gasps – _Jesus, Coulson, give the girl some warning_ she whispers and laughs nervously. They still feel new to one another, their bodies still full of little surprises, and though that's exciting in its own right Coulson decides he can't wait until he knows every noise Skye makes under his touch, until she knows every sensitive inch of his body and that's a dangerous thought, a dangerous decision, full of _future_ and expectations and complications, but this is Skye, of course it was always going to be about future and expectations and complications, of course he wants more than now, this now, even if _now_ looks pretty spectacular from where he is standing, Skye rocking back and forth, matching the rhythm of his hips, of his fingers darting over her skin.

He pushes her a bit towards the dashboard, bending her to get the right angle, and a couple of strokes more do the trick and she comes, grunting as she bites her lower lip; it's so unladylike and Coulson couldn't give a shit, he finds it arousing, her pleasure, with him, around him.

Skye falls back against his shoulder, twisting in his arms and loose-limbed, and gasping for air right there under his jaw.

"Fuck, Coulson." She buries the side of her face against his neck, her voice soft and heavy. "... _Phil_."

It sounds so – okay, he makes a very _conscious_ effort not to come just from that, because it would be humilliating, he thinks. He holds on for a moment, gripping her thighs in his hands, feeling oversensitive skin shiver under his palms. She recovers just enough to lift her hips once, twice, letting him thrust up, engulfed by her aftershocks, and in a moment he's a goner as well, hands going tight on her waist, arms rigid.

"Oh, well," she says afterwards, laughing, actually and wonderfully laughing. Coulson grabs her arm and helps her up a bit so he can pull out, trying not to make much of a mess. She twists her head to smile at him: "Not too shabby. Those Penthouse readers might be on to something."

He runs one hand along her side.

"Now you know why men my age buy these cars," he says and okay, it's not very good but it makes her laugh, anyway. He feels it all over him, in her weight still held in part by his hands.

"Yeah, right," and she rolls her eyes in that particular way, like she does every time Coulson brings up the age issue.

She climbs back to the driver's seat but she tosses her jeans aside and rests her bare legs across Coulson's lap. They wriggle a bit until the position is comfortable. His fingers trace the line of her shin, the soft layer of hair and the sweat. She's still sensitive post-orgasm and the skin under his fingertips jumps at the touch, ticklish. Coulson smiles. They might be in a two-seat convertible but this is the most domestic they've ever been – he can't say he dislikes it.

"I think we might have just defiled Lola," she says.

"I think you are right. You owe her a visit to the car wash at least," he tells her. She opens her mouth, mock-appalled at his words. He knows Skye enjoys discovering just how dirty he can get. Not too bad for a man his age, he thinks, smirking to himself, post-orgasm dizziness telling him: a pretty girl in your Corvette, if this is a mid-life crisis you should have started sooner on that shit. He gets distracted all of the sudden brushing his thumb against the inside of her ankle, noticing how the skin feels different there, not rougher or softer, just different. He wonders if in the past couple of months they've had time at all, if he has ever touched this particular spot.

When he looks up she's looking at him in a weird way. He's used to Skye looking at him in many different weird ways, he's just not sure which one this is, an unblinking, curious glance.

"What?"

"I love this car," she says. She reaches to take one of his hands in hers. "And _you_."

It makes him pause a moment, like air punched out of his lungs. Then it's nothing like that, it's not sharp, it's a warm and slippery feeling knotting around his chest.

Coulson chuckles, leans over to say something in Skye's ear: and it's definitely the dangerous thing to say, because there's a lot of future and expectations and complications in those few words.


End file.
